For those of us who have tracked Chinese political trends since the late 1970s when Deng Xiaoping came to power, reading the news about China these days can prove strangely disorienting. One week, we’ll be struck by a slew of stories, on everything from fast trains to record growth rates, which underscore how different China is than it was when Deng first launched his reforms. The next week, though, we’ll be struck just as powerfully by a sense of eerie familiarity. Headline after headline — about the intractability of corruption, the death of a watermelon vendor or a petitioner’s desperate attempt to draw attention to this plight by detonating an explosive device at a Beijing airport — seem just like those we came across a few years or even a couple of decades ago.

Last week, things got especially strange because a big we’re-in-new-territory and a significant here-we-go-again China story hit simultaneously. In the former category, there was the release of new Pew Global Attitudes Project figures showing just how many people around the world are now convinced China is or soon will be the leading global superpower. Of the many stories that triggered déjà vu, one of the most significant told of Xu Zhiyong, a moderate campaigner for civil rights and the rule of law and whistle-blower on official corruption, who has been detained.

It’s worth remembering, where the Pew numbers are concerned, that when Deng took over a country, which was still reeling from the tumult of the decade-long Cultural Revolution (1966–76), not only did he make the need to modernize China his mantra, but many Americans wished him Godspeed. The main U.S. worry then was about a weak China unable to feed itself, and an unstable China that might prove a wild-card actor in global affairs. There was little thought that China could one day go head to head with America. There was also a lot of hope in the West that economic development in China would bring democracy in its wake, especially among those convinced Deng would prove a thoroughgoing, rather than just economic, reformer.

The Pew figures show just how much the ground has shifted. Four years ago, a third of the Americans surveyed (33%) were already saying they believed China already was or soon would be the world’s leading superpower, but now almost half claim to think so (47%). In Britain, meanwhile, the 2009 to 2013 numbers went from 49% to 66%.

The Xu story, by contrast, points to lack of change rather than transformation. Reports about his latest detention read almost word for word like those written when he was arrested a few years ago, when Hu Jintao rather than Xi Jinping was China’s President. Xu’s arrest, as well as that of other similar campaigners for reform, is now being widely interpreted as the latest in a series of signs that it was overly optimistic to think that Xi would be more liberal and tolerant of dissent than Hu. Commentators are also noting the irony of anticorruption activists being seized at a time when Xi is saying one of his top priorities is stemming corruption. A particularly dispiriting development followed Xu’s arrest, when the lawyer trying to get him freed, Liu Weiguo, was also seized.

It is not just the crackdown that is depressingly familiar, but also the references to dashed hopes about Xi. When Hu came to power, there was the same cycle of expressions of hope that he would prove more tolerant of dissent and more determined to rein in official corruption than his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, had been, followed soon by stories of that optimism proving unfounded.

The same thing happened, even more memorably, with Deng. Hopes for his potential to liberalize China were stronger than for either Hu or Xi, but then he dashed them definitively by backing the brutal June 4, 1989 massacre, which crushed a movement that began with students calling for an end to corrupt and nepotistic practices.

To historians of the pre-1949 period, like me, there is an added twist to this interplay between novelty and familiarity in recent headlines. Decades before Deng dreamed of leading a party that would take China out of a period of chaos, and modernize it, and raise its global stature by building up the economy, Nationalist Party leader Chiang Kai-shek had the same aspiration. Chiang too inspired hopes in some quarters that he would be both a great liberalizer and a great modernizer. And he too in turn did things that made many feel they had misread him, as he proved unwilling or unable to rein in corruption and nepotism within the National Party, seemed much readier to tinker with the economy than shift China from a single party to a multiparty state, and showed the same kind of intolerance to an earlier era’s dissidents that Xi is showing to civil-society activists now.

When I read the news on China, I think not just about how far the country has moved since Deng’s time but also since Chiang’s. And yet, while China is radically different in so many ways than it was in the Nationalist period (1927–49) or earlier in the current post-Mao era, Xu’s detention and increased doubts about Xi’s potential to move China forward politically remind me not only of things I’ve been reading in the press since the late 1970s, but also things I’ve encountered in the archives from three-quarters of a century ago.

Wasserstrom is the author of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, an updated edition of which has just been published by Oxford University Press.

most of you think the rebellion happening in 1989 is the fault of ccp,of china.however,have you ever thought about the mistakes of the students?aren't they a little unreasonable?undoubtedly,deng ,as well as his party, is cruel to the walkers,but i hope we can be fair to all the details of the rebellion.be more clear-headed.

1989 incidents sacrifice many students with passion and creative mind, the society's mind turn back from idealism to practism, the people's republic of China survived after the collapse of other communist countries and avoid the possible outcome of chaos, but it is not a thing that we can be pride of. I hate those shameless people, who say Zhu Yuanzhang or Zhu Li, is a good emperor, what they are doing, represent the trend of the development, and is a advance of society. In the same way, the 1989 incidents, make China more focus on economic reform than institutional reform; the market economy is based on the protection of private property and ownship. The state-owned company is belong to the people, which is only nominal, but actually it is controlled by a layer of previliaged people. It is reason that the Chinese economy may face future downfall. Although China is boasted as the world's second largest economy body, which we can not be pride of also. it has sacrificed too much environment polution, and the people are rarely benefitted from it, after decade of almost two figure growth, the average income of Chinese, is till around 1/10 of that of America. Farmer's land are acquisited by the developers, some willingly, some forced, in exchange of a few hundred thousand RMB, they exchange the living methods for those paper which is depreciated very rapidly, and may cause future unrest for the society. There is nothing we may be pride of.

It is far too late for the brutal gangster regime known as the Chinese Communist Party to make any amends as if it has any intentions of doing so. And it does not. The CCP is a blood-thirsty cult that has murdered one hundred million of its own people since it took power in 1949 and since 1999 has been attempting the genocide of the tens of millions of innocent Falun Gong by the use of torture, slavery, organ harvesting and murder. The heinous CCP has hundred of slave camps hidden all over Mainland Chins containing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. making all kinds of cheap items such as chopsticks and poisonous children's toys for nothing for the corrupt officials to profit from and put into their already stuffed billion dollar over-seas accounts. The cruel CCP has brainwashed its people and has bought off Western media and Governments from its inception but the truth is beginning to be told. The CCP has forced its people down a despairing road that has no belief in God or goodness, just greed and eternal struggle. Its days are numbered. This is just my understanding, thank you.

In reading Mr. Wassertrom's article, the content and comments struck me in quite a different manner. 1) In the west, and even in China, there is a common misconception in labeling national leaders of various countries : reformist, friendly to the west (or in the case of western countries, the Chinese would say this leader is friendly to China). Are you kidding me? All national leaders should have the best interest of the country in mind, whether they are labeled as hardliner, west (or China) friendly, labels from the press and for the uninformed to think this way. I never believe there is such thing as a "China friendly" U.S. politician, and vice versa. 2) As to whether China will be a superpower in x years, again, I am not hung up on that. The country is making progress, the leaders are struggling to keep the people happy : housing, food, education, gasoline etc., all the things people will need in a normal society. Remember they need to take care all these needs, plus more, for 1.5bn people. 3) and the information about corrupt officials, water melon farmer / seller who got killed. Yes these are sad things that happened, and shocking news to read. Yet look at it in another way - that in some ways the country IS making progress, that these bad things are actually being aired, and for your information, the urban council staff who caused the death of the water melon seller are facing criminal charges now. That is the kind of society I look for in China : that the people who broke the law, officials or not, will face justice. Of course I can hear the noises now that for everyone being punished, there are 10 who got away. To this noise I say yes, it may be but at least the government is doing something. As the saying goes, Rome was not built in one day. And I use the same rationale again - that to turn around a country slightly bigger than the continental U.S., with 1.5bn people, it takes time.

Progress : how about young people are free to go overseas to study? Free to travel to other countries, free to emigrate to other countries?

One last comment : to all the :"China Experts" who write endless articles about China (whether it is negative, neutral, positive), when was the last time they were in China, actually lived there? And for the people who are living in China, writing about China, how often do they interact with people on the street, to listen to the desire and aspiration of the average people? And how often do they interact with people from the rural areas, not just talking to city folks?

We all want China to succeed, but a China no matter its political form, would not be "friendly" nor would it be hostile to other countries. China and its leadership will look for the ways to best provide for its people. A China that is "friendly" to the west would only be one that was like in the late 18th century and early 19th century, when the country was weak, divided by powerful outside powers (it is no need for me to mention which of these countries are here). A reformist national leader in China is to reform the country for the benefit and in the best interest of its people, not to appease and appeal to outside power.

@thingsasya Is your posting approved by the Party? Or typed by it? Also, "dirty American hands? REALLY? If it weren't for America's buying power, China would still be a bunch of peasants struggling to feed themselves. We don't care if you make it to superpower or you fail attempting it. You will see how lonely is the top!